Mark, I need to know a bit more about your approach. What do you mean when you say "grammar is embedded in your KR"? For an example rule like "NP --> det noun", how is it represented or "embedded" in your scheme?
Your approach may have these problems: 1. you cannot learn a new NL; English is hard-wired in your KR 2. you may have difficulty interpreting "irregular" sentences. For examples: "Better is the enemy of good" or "I am so not into this stuff". Your texts need to be 100% grammatical. 3. you may have problems doing "meta-linguistic" reasoning, ie, reasoning *about* language itself. For example, recognizing the peculiar speech pattern of Yoda in Star Wars, or... (can't think of more examples now). In my approach, everything is represented by rules, therefore it has the most *generality*. Your critique is that it is computationally too slow, but I can use the following speed-up tricks: 1. human-assisted disambiguation (asking the user questions etc) 2. restrict to Basic English and short sentences 3. other heuristics to improve the inference engine, eg using word frequency statistics My main focus is on *integrating* reasoning (particularly abduction and deduction), NLP, and truth maintenance. My emphasis is on the big picture and I prefer to build a general-but-slow system rather than an efficient-but-limited one. But I'm interested in working with people with different foci, so our skills can be complementary. Also it's possible that we work on a common system while exploring slightly different directions. On 4/28/07, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
You take your route and I'll take mine. I'm curious though (and this is a
*major* first question) -- Are you going to allow people to define new terms? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ I will allow people to define new words -- it's not that difficult, it seems.
Second, I don't believe that it is possible to learn complex grammar rules
(via machine learning or any other method) unless you have a certain *rather large* amount of knowledge. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Agreed, and therefore I don't try to tackle this initially. That's why I'll use Basic English.
I apparently wasn't clear. By paraphrasing, I didn't mean re-arranging
the sentence so that the grammar was different. I meant using different words with the same meaning. Whenever my system encounters a new word, it is going to ensure that it understands that word (by being able to translate it down to Basic English) or else it won't accept/use that word. Is your system going to have the same requirement? If so, I will withdraw my statement but if not I'll ask . . . . "What do you mean by understanding" since I will certainly argue that mere grammatical e-arrangement is NOT understanding. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Yes, I'm talking about paraphrase in the broadest sense - with change of wording etc. 1. Given 2 sentences A and B, if the user asks the query "Is A a paraphrase of B?" I think a logical reasoner can answer it. This is just theorem proving. 2. If you want the system to spontaneously recognize that A paraphrases B (without being asked explicitly) then the problem requires forward-chaining, and may suffer from combinatorial explosion. But still, it can be done.
My method, is to build the system to the point of understanding Basic
English + adult grammar by loading it all into my KR and building tools to compactly load new knowledge (including new terms) into the KR, to actively harvest new terms from one or more dictionaries and load it into the KR, and to then harvest knowledge from encyclopedias and load it into the KR. Note that this method is *NOT* particularly harder because adult level grammar is not that much more difficult than what (A) requires and contrary to what you state, (B) does NOT require *ANY* commonsense knowledge to be hand-coded. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ By "harvesting from dictionaries" do you mean "true" understanding of dictionary entries, or just correlating words statistically? Usually a dictionary entry uses several words or phrases to define a word. Eg: "*Horn - n. a hard permanent outgrowth, often curved and pointed, on the head of cattle, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and other esp. hoofed mammals, found singly, in pairs, or one in front of another.*" YKY ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
